Executive Summary

Key Findings

Based on current statistics there
are in excess of 300 million Web users and on-line world trade is expected top
£250 billion by the year 2002.By 2001,
over 60,000 European companies are expecting to conduct commerce over the
Internet and by 2005, it is estimated that around half of all credit card
transactions will take place over the Internet. Following this phenomenal
growth rate, there is a corresponding difficulty in finding specific web sites
when the searcher lacks the direct address.

This report looks at how
professionals and consumers search the web and what they think of the creation
of the new .pro domain name.

·61% of respondents go straight to their favourite search
engine to search for an organisation.

·92% of respondents would feel comfortable using a new
system to search for a professional service.

·Only 2% of respondents could find the correct information
they searched for.

·56% of respondents had to complete numerous search attempts
to find a specific person or organisation.

·96% of respondents believe a system that pre-filtered
websites would be of use.

·Law firms are the most popular choice (80%) of organisation
that should be represented by the .pro domain name.

·Summary

This
analysis is based on 50 telephone interviews: 24% with consumers and 76% with
professionals.The majority of
respondents are from the following four sectors; accountants, engineers,
financial planners and insurance agents.The respondents operate in a wide range of industries from accountancy
to medicine and are mainly proprietors.

Searching the Web

When looking for a specific
person, service provider or other entity on the Internet for the first time,
respondents are most likely to go straight to their favourite search engine
(61%).

Despite the likelihood of
respondents to go to their favourite search engine, 14% often give up because
they are overwhelmed with results that run on for pages and seem to have
nothing to do with their search and over 50% have to refine the search again
and again before finding what they want.This indicates that despite dissatisfaction, search engines are still
the most convenient method of searching the web.

Site designers use
meta-tags to tell search engines what is in their site and there is nothing to
stop them putting unrelated words in the code to attract the engines. It is
partly for this reason that searchers are swamped with seemingly unrelated
pages.

96% of respondents would
find it of some use to have a system in place that pre-filters web sites and
listings so that only certified sites are returned as results of their
search.

This indicates a positive
environment for the launch of a new search engine based on site authentication.

Results indicate that consumers are less likely to
continue searching for an individual or organisation, if they cannot be found
on their favourite search engine. Whereas, professionals are likely to then try
to search the internet using keywords and search commands in their web browser.

Domain Names

In addition to suffixes
such as .com and .org new suffixes may soon be available.It may be possible to locate licensed
professional services using a web address such as .pro, the professional categories that respondents would
expect to find under .pro are as
follows

Accountants

76%

Architects

65%

Doctors

76%

Engineers

43%

Financial Planners or Brokers

55%

Health Organisations and Hospitals

24%

Insurance Agents

49%

Law Firms

80%

Solicitors

65%

Other

20%

According to respondents, the
most appropriate way to authenticate that the individual or organisation listed
as .pro is licensed to practice
their profession is if it is an established professional association (62%).

63% of respondents would be at
least very comfortable using a new system to search for a professional service
if organisations and individuals could be listed as licensed professionals in
their field.

The only difference between
business-to-business and consumer respondents is that the entire consumer group
claim that they would be comfortable utilising this new search system.

This research shows that a new
method of searching for professional services would be welcome. At present,
only 2% of respondents could find the exact information they were searching for
straight away with their current search engines.Almost all (96%) users would feel comfortable with this new
search method.The name of the suffix
however, would apparently cause some amusement, particularly among older
respondents.